Saturday, July 26, 2014

The Coinage of Carthage

PUNIC WATCH: The Coinage of Carthage (Mike Markowitz, CoinWeek).
Most of what we know about Carthaginians was written by their enemies–first the Greeks, then the Romans. They are described as greedy, treacherous and brutal. Yet even Cicero, a Roman politician born 40 years after Carthage was wiped out, grudgingly admitted that “Carthage would never have held an empire for six hundred years had it not been governed with wisdom and statesmanship.”

None of its literature, and very little of its art, architecture or material culture survives.

But we have the coins.

[...]
The article puts the coinage into a nice capsule history of Carthage.